Charlies Soap Laundry Detergent
NEW! I have soft water so I can't test this new hard water product from Charlies, but I do expect it to be good.
Charlie's Soap Laundry Booster & Hard Water Treatment uses a biodegradable phosphate that leaves no residue on your clothes while softening your wash water. The advantage of using our new Booster with Charlie's Soap is that you get best of both worlds: really clean clothes without a lot of unsafe chemicals left behind in your clothes, your washer and the environment. With Charlie's Soap Laundry Booster & Hard Water Treatment, all you do is your wash as you normally would (with Charlie's Soap of course!) and add ½ to 1 Tablespoon of the Booster for each dose of Soap. As with all laundry additives, you should probably test on garments that may bleed or fade.
Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder or Liquid. It's not a soap, in spite of it's name, but it washes well and rinses easily. It's petroleum-free! Clean rinsing. It's not for everyone. No one laundry product is, but I happen to like this one best in my soft water. Use it full time for all of your laundry - it is not a part-time choice, and is not for use in shared laundry facilities. Laundry Info 101: Please note that if you switch back and forth between typical detergents (that contain petroleum, whiteners, brighteners and enzymes - what I call "gunk" which is also called residue) and clean-rinsing products such as Charlie's, the Charlies will work on stripping off the residue and gunk from the mainstream detergent instead of cleaning. That gunk takes several or many cycles to strip off, (since it's designed to coat the fabric). So as it is being removed, the gunk will sit on top of on your diapers and cause problems. So don't use the gunk detergents and keep your diapers residue-free. When switching to Charlie's, or any clean-rinsing product, for the first time after using a mainstream detergent, you'll need to run several cycles to clear out the residues left in your machine and on fabrics from your prior detergent. Clean your dispensers and wipe out the machine, too. Use Charlie's full time so you don't have any bad stuff in you machine or on your diapers to cause problems.
Also, some people have mistaken the term "clean rinsing" by thinking that it somehow required less rinsing than another detergent. That's not right! All laundry products must be fully rinsed, and warm or hot water rinses so much better than cold for all laundry products. Clean rinsing means that when the diapers are fully rinsed, it does not leave a residue. When fully rinsed out and used full time, Charlie's is fabulous, the best of the best especially for average or soft water.
Add an additive-free oxygen cleaner or other sanitizer to your hot cycle with your Charlie's to sanitize, as is needed for all detergents. Know this - all detergents are designed for cleaning, not disinfecting (unless it's a product with added disinfectant) so you also need to add a disinfectant to do the sanitizing. When you place an order from GMD and you check the checkbox on the checkout page, you'll receive an 18 page "Green Mountain How-To Booklet" which explains all this more fully so you can make the detergent decision that is best for your laundry situation. The Booklet is a wealth of cloth diapering how-to information, available WITH an order. I happen to love Charlies in my soft water, so I have this link available. It's low-sudsing and suitable for HE washers. Unlike other detergents, Charlie's is honest about how much you need, so there is no need to "use half the amount". Detergent is your friend. It's needed. Skimping on how much detergent you use will not get things clean, but still you have to fully rinse so it's always a learning process at first to get your amounts right for your water conditions no matter what laundry products you choose.
For about 4 years now, Charlie's is still my all-time favorite for diapers and all our laundry. I keep trying different laundtry products now and then, and I try other clean rinsing products, but I'm always so happy to come back to my Charlies and stop messing around with trying detergents (but hey, that is part of my job to try different detergents to learn about them). My family is sensitive to mainstream detergents. Everytime I try one, my husband catches me and asks, "did you try a different detergent?" He knows because his skin gets rashy everytime I try something that is not clean rinsing and even sometimes with a clean-rinsing product. Will it work for you in your water? I don't know, but I love it for our family's sensitive skin.
NOTE: Just like oxygen cleaner doesn't disslove well in cold water, neither does Charlies or other similar laundry products when powder is chosen. In cold water, it will clump and won't dissolve. Choose warm or hot water for powder. Warm water is much better for rinsing, too.
A new window will open when you click on the links below. Green Mountain Diapers does not sell Charlie's Soap, but if you click through on the link below to purchase we do receive a small referral commission. Even if we didn't get a commission, I'd still post this link. I really love this stuff, and all the Charlie's products. Charlie's Soap is a registered trademark of Shiloh Products, Inc.
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